Embarking on my long-delayed voyage into the rocky ocean of William Blake. Reading in order of publication. First up: Poetical Sketches (pub'd 1783), which contains some (literally) adolescent verse as well a laughably bad (and wisely aborted) drama on Edward III. Said incomplete drama features Dagworth, a soldier so enraptured by the prospect of facing the enemy that he bursts into psalmic parody: "Now my heart dances and I am as light / as the young bridegroom going to be married." Even allowing for intentional authorial irony, this is horrendous. Exhibit B: A lengthy philosophical discussion between Dagworth and William "his man" continues to moralize ad nauseam until it finally concludes with a limp attempt at self-derision: "Thou [William] art an endless moralist." Taken on their own, though, these examples can't do justice to the overall sense of the drama's grade B-ness. See also: "Stop, brave Sir Walter; let me drop a tear, / then let the clarion of war begin." MST3K is called for.
Favorite moments: prose poem The Couch of Death is overwrought, but decent. Reminds me of a much less affecting DFW's "Incarnations of Burned Children." Also, the random mention of a "Gordred the Giant" in Gwin King of Norway ( = long and lurid proto-Marxist call for a worker's revolution).
